As a tourist, I didn't realize what a commitment I was making when I bought a snack from a vending machine one morning. I had to carry around the empty wrapper until I got back to my hotel room that night.
That said the inverse problem in the USA is that there are practically no public toilets and if you find one it’s probably disgusting. I find that a much bigger inconvenience than needing to carry some garbage around!
Interestingly they have similar dynamics: due to the scarcity of that public resource, the cost of providing it becomes very high, which causes it to become more scarce. In the US, a business providing a public washroom has to deal with very heavy usage, because of how rare they are, which makes maintenance expensive. They become the bathroom for the whole neighborhood. In Japan, businesses can offer clean high quality washrooms at little cost because there are many others sharing the load. But a convenience store offering a garbage bin in a popular area will quickly find it overloaded.
This creates a feedback loop where scarcity drives further scarcity.
No, the author (who's also the one who posted this to HN) thinks it is a burden, but it's one you voluntarily agreed to by purchasing and consuming the item whose remains are now garbage.
Caveat: some of those garbage cans are for can recycling only. But there is often another one for garbage like food wrappers.